Original title: KRIVOLAK IS THE EXTENDED HAND OF COVID-19
On December 20th, 2020, the portal Sloboden Svet published an article titled KRIVOLAK IS THE EXTENDED HAND OF COVID-19. The content of the text refers to the statement of the Minister of Defense Radmila Shekerinska for the locality Krivolak that it will become the biggest and best thing, from where the NATO exercises will be performed, allegedly after the excavators work according to the author of the text(which is not signed) “after the preparation and reworking of the field they will come, those who should come with their soldiers will come, with tools of all kinds, with exhaust and scattering air waves spread throughout Macedonia, and widely in the “Balkans” and so on. something like depleted uranium, which we know of its consequences, or will serve us with some new specialties”. Following his conclusion about the Krivolak army range, he created the title that allegedly Krivolak is an extended arm of COVID-19.
The author of the text created a click-bite title of a text in which he presents old disinformation about depleted uranium on Krivolak, which were “current” in 2018 and 2019 in the process of Euro-Atlantic integration of our country.
F2N2 monitored this narrative at the time and published its analysis so that the public would know the truth. In it, the claims from social media and portals are denied by the Ministry of Defense. “The Ministry of Defense most responsibly claims that neither the current nor the future trainings of our NATO partners at the Krivolak range are of any danger to the health of citizens, nor will depleted uranium bombs be used.”
What happened in the past month at the Krivolak Army range is that it received a new road in the length of 33 km which opens a new access from the shooting range Penush near Stip, and at the same time the road infrastructure in the range of 15 km was renewed. The Minister of Defense informed about the work done and the future plans for this capacity, which she said is “an additional resource in the collective defense and security of the Alliance” and “our identity card in NATO”.
Regarding the importance of the infrastructure activities at the test site for the Alliance, Minister Shekerinska pointed out that “with this investment, with this renewed and new infrastructure, next year when another major exercise will be organized in cooperation with the US Army and several other armies in the neighborhood. We will have a chance to show them how much we have improved this training ground in just one year and that will increase the interest for joint work of ‘Krivolak’.”
Shekerinska announced financial support from the US Army for part of the project and that in the first half of next year we expect US engineers to join our engineers in the activities for infrastructure development of the test site.
The text published by an unknown author on the anonymous portal Sloboden Svet is an example of the progress or success of the (in this case the Ministry of Defense of) Republic of North Macedonia, as a member of the NATO Alliance used to manipulate the public with old already known disinformation, aimed at inciting fear and panic. Especially in this period of pandemic, the author associates the disinformative anti-NATO narrative with the COVID-19 virus, which makes it easier to influence the audience and reinforces the already existing sense of fear caused by the virus.
